Whilst the Board is an independent body, it is responsible to the General Manager of Land and Property Information, currently Des Mooney (presently Chairman of the Board); who reports to the Director General of the Department of Finance and Services, currently Michael Coutts-Trotter. Both the General Manager for Land and Property Information and the Director General of the Department report to the Minister for Finance and Services, currently the Honourable Greg Pearce MLC.

The Board was established in 1966 pursuant to the Geographical Names Act 1966.[1]

The Geographical Names Act, 1966, empowers the Board to assign names to places, to investigate and determine the form, spelling, meaning, pronunciation, origin and history of any geographical name and the application of such name with regard to position, extent or otherwise.

A place is described in the Act as "any geographical or topographical feature or any district, division, locality, region, city, town, village, settlement or railway station or any other place within the territories and waters of the State of New South Wales but does not include any road, any local government area, urban area, county or district under the Local Government Act, electoral district or subdivision, or any school". The Act also specifies the procedures for formalising names.

In recent years the Board has been given the power to preserve and promote Aboriginal languages and acknowledge Aboriginal culture through place naming in NSW. The Board does this by preferencing traditional Aboriginal place names or names with Aboriginal origin wherever it can. The Board is dedicated to restoring traditional Aboriginal names to features with introduced names through its dual naming policy and recognising important traditional Aboriginal placenames alongside longstanding introduced names.[2]

The Board's policy mirrors the U.S. Board of Geographical names in that it seeks to eliminate possessive names from all place names in NSW. Roads called Smith's Road are changed to Smiths Road or Smith Road.